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Dec 22, 2008

It is better to give

I came across these verses this morning as I was reading in Proverbs 11:


24 One man gives freely, yet gains even more;


another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty


25 A generous man will prosper;


he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.

These verses jumped out at me because we had just been discussing generosity and giving FREELY with our kids. Yesterday we had a chance (through Missio and Interfaith Works) to bring gifts to a refugee family from Burma. The kids are pretty good at being generous, and they were excited to meet the kids we bought gifts for. We knew that this family had next to nothing, and we never expected anything in return for the few small gifts that we brought...

The family we visited has been in America for 3 months. There teenage daughter spoke the most English, and even that wasn't much. But they invited us into their home and gave us their couch (while they all sat on the floor). The kids had such big smiles on their faces as we handed them the gift bags. And the mother was beaming.


The mother motioned for us to take our coats off. Then she said something about rice and ran to the other room. She came back and started handing out shirts to all of us. "Kopi shirt" "Kopi, Christmas, shirt" When we put the shirts on, she decided some of us needed different sizes and settled on a bag for Cadence since all the shirts were far too big for her.


Once she was satisfied with the shirt situation, the mother said something to her daughter and ran out again. This time she returned with a bowl full of food and two spoons. ?? Being an American, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this - but of course she motions for me to sit on the floor and hands me the dish. The light was broken in there living room and it was getting dark outside. I couldn't have identified what I was about to eat if I wanted to. And I wasn't sure I wanted to... if you know me at all you know I am a super picky eater.

Grinning and nodding all the while I grabbed a spoonful of what almost looked like bugs and took a big, smiling bite. I was kind of holding my breath while I chewed in hopes that I wouldn't gag. It was crunchy - really crunchy. I noticed it didn't taste too bad! It turned out to be some kind of nuts with some spices or something. It was really very good, and I was so grateful for that. I proceeded to pass the bowl around to my family and everyone but Cadence had a little.


As we were leaving, the mother kept hugging me and telling me "You make children very happy" "You come back here" "You are family now" "Thank you". It must have been nearly all the English she knew. I wish I had thought to bring the camera with us, but we didn't know how the outing would go. We were told these families normally won't open the door for anyone so we half expected to hand them the presents at the door and then leave. But I did get some pics of us in our gifts when we got home.


It's too bad you can't really see Todd's jacket behind the kids. He is planning on wearing it to church Christmas Eve, so maybe I'll get a better picture of it then.

Dec 15, 2008

Christmas Tree pics




We went out last weekend to get our tree, and got it decorated this weekend. This is always a stressful thing for me (I just don't like Christmas very much) but it went really well this year. The kids were all involved and excited about the whole thing.

It was snowing pretty hard when we got to the tree place, so once we found a tree we all liked the kids found shelter under a group of trees. They would have been happy to play there for hours.







After the decorating, we did some family pictures in front of the tree. This was my first ever attempt at using the timer on a camera. Not the greatest picture ever, but not the worst...


Then I got down on the floor to take some shots of the kids. The dog kept running up to me and licking the lens of my new camera!!! But when we tried to get her in a picture, she refused to sit and be photographed. I'm quite sure she has brain damage. At least she's cute.




But they are much cuter!!!

Dec 10, 2008

A poem by Gabriel

I was going to type it out here, but I thought it would be better to let him read it to you. He wrote this yesterday during quiet time. He didn't spell yeah right, he spelled it "ya" but it was good other than that.

I don't know what possessed him to write a poem, but he said he is writing another one today. Sorry it is sideways, I couldn't figure out how to rotate a video...